Public responses to an environmental transport policy in Sweden: Differentiating between acceptance and support for conventional and alternative fuel vehicles

Understanding public responses to environmental policies can help in achieving a move towards more renewable energy. Focusing on two types of public responses to a policy, namely public acceptance and public support, this study utilizes a survey of car owners (N = 1422) to explore public responses to an environmental transport policy in Sweden. The results demonstrate higher levels of public acceptance than support for the policy and that adopters of Alternative Fuel Vehicles (AFVs) are more prone to accept and support the policy by expressing higher intentions for continuous AFV adoption. Results of regression analyses show that policy acceptance can be explained by environmental beliefs and previous experience with AFVs. In addition, public support is also explained by public acceptance, even when controlling for other factors, which lends support to the deduction that policy acceptance can be theorized as antecedent to policy support. This study emphasizes the importance of understanding different types of public responses to an energy policy in order to recognize drivers for, and barriers against, successfully implementing a policy and communicating it with the public.